Concerto for Piano and Jazz Band

This is the fourth movement, named Run! Doh!, of Concerto for Piano and Jazz Band. The idea was to create a concerto in the classical forms for a pianist who does not improvise in the piece, but who would be a player with sympathy and affinity for the jazz style. The performer here, Prof. Joel Clifft of Azusa Pacific University (who in fact can improvise jazz with expertise), certainly addresses the keyboard with great elan and brio.

With apologies to those possessing more subtle senses of humor, the movements of the concerto are named thusly:

I. Sambata For Me (a sonata-allegro form disguised as a samba with some mixed meters – the title is a play on “sonata form”)

II. A doggy? Oh! (the adagio movement, a compound ternary form with an extended piano/flugel introduction)

III. Scared? So fugue! (a scherzo with cross-rhythms, based on an ostinato that’s harmonized many ways, followed by a fugue that was created by taking great liberties with Fughetta in G by J.S.Bach — extended subject and associated counterpoint, additional voices, harmonized in a different key [C] from the original pitch placement, while leaving the pitches where there were, thus leaving the original fugal voices out in the extensions and color tones, etc.)

IV. Run! Doh! (a rondo, essentially a dance movement in this case, a race to the finish, with many stop-offs along the way)

A concerto approach offers levels of interaction and tightly woven engagement that are difficult to achieve in a typical jazz solo feature where the soloist improvises over “backgrounds” from the band. That level of integration is as challenging as any concerto performance with a soloist, and the Azusa Pacific University Jazz Ensemble, directed by David Beatty, approaches this task with precision and gusto.